California Biographies 

Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California
by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. 
Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura
Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

RICHARD PHILLIPS, one of the successful business men of Nordhoff, can recount a great many 
experiences in his individual career. It is evi- dent that he early became not only self reliant but 
resourceful, and when the door of opportunity closed to him in one direction he was not at a 
loss to find an avenue for his efficient energy somewhere else. At the core of all his activities 
have been hard work and a determined purpose, and with him as with others these qualities 
have brought their adequate reward.
An Englishman by birth, born near the City of Oxford in Buckinghamshire November 27, 1860, a 
son of Richard and Elizabeth Phillips, his education was comparatively brief, being confined to 
the years before he was twelve. There he was variously employed around his birth place until 
his sixteenth year. At that age he found employment in the bleaching department of the Acroyd 
Dye Works at Bradford, England, remaining there four years.
He was therefore about twenty when he came to America. He made a living for the next three 
years working on farms in Champaign County, Illinois. The McFarland Company of Kentucky 
then employed him as a contractor in the draining of part of the fifty-six sections of land owned 
and controlled by the company in Illinois and other states. When the ground was too dry to 
carry on effective drainage operations he used his equipment in boring wells about the county.
He did not enjoy the best of health in Illinois, and it was for that reason that he came out to 
California in 1887. He put in the first month working on a ranch near Santa Ana, another month 
employed as a night watchman in Los Angeles, and from there came to Nordhoff, where he 
found employment on the county roads until 1896. The next five years he spent chiefly 
prospecting in the Fitzgerald Mountains and Gold Hill. In 1901 he set up in business as a 
contractor, boring wells, laying pipe lines, and constructing reservoirs. Since 1903 Mr. Phillips 
has developed a reputation as a landscape gardener, and not only has the supervision of Ojai 
Improvement Company's properties in adorning and beautifying them, but also is landscape 
gardener for the residence grounds of Mr. C. M. Pratt, H. Waldo Foster, E. D. Libby and H. T. 
Sinclair.
In the meantime he has invested on his own account and has helped develop some portions of 
the Ojai Valley. In 1891 he bought ten acres near Nordhoff, planted it in almonds and prunes, 
but in 1900 removed these trees and replanted 32 acres in oranges. He has a half interest in 
twelve acres in the foothills near Nordhoff, which eventually will be subdivided for residence 
property. In 1903 Mr. Phillips erected a pump- ing plant in the northeastern part of the Ojai 
Improvement Company's grounds, and that furnishes water for his orange grove. He is now a 
stockholder in the Nordhoff Power Company. Mr. Phillips is unmarried, a member of the Jack 
Boyd Club of Nordhoff, is a republican, and a member of the Episcopal Church, in which he was 
reared.